Sorting the Cured Beans

As the beans com­plete their cur­ing, they need to be inspect­ed, sort­ed, and pack­aged for long-term stor­age. We’ve been doing this for 2 months now, and some of the ear­li­est beans to go into stor­age are ready for sale or to be made into one of our vanil­la prod­ucts, such as extract or syrup.

The beans are ini­tial­ly sort­ed into three groups: Grade A, Grade B and Extract. This is accord­ing to mois­ture con­tent and appear­ance. They are then vac­u­um-packed and will be aged in that state for 1–6 months.

This year’s har­vest is our first big har­vest and we’re not quite sure how it’s all going to get mar­ket­ed. Of course there will be online retail sales, and per­haps a cou­ple of shops on the island will car­ry our vanil­la prod­ucts.

We are engag­ing our con­tacts in the culi­nary world, too. We’re inter­est­ed to know how the qual­i­ty of our beans mea­sures up with peo­ple who know vanilla…and of course, we will be sell­ing whole­sale to pro­fes­sion­als who are look­ing for arti­sanal Hawaiian vanil­la.

The Grade B Hawaiian vanil­la beans are very nice. The beans are a good size, moist and have an oily shine. The aro­ma was very strong and sweet & remind­ed me of vanil­la caramels. These vanil­la beans are excel­lent qual­i­ty.